Wealthy Apple

Wealthy was developed by Peter Gideon, who moved to Minnesota from Illinois with his wife, Wealthy Hull Gideon, in 1853, settling near Lake Minnetonka with a mission to find an apple variety that could actually survive Minnesota winters — something no one had yet managed. Over 14 years, Gideon planted and grafted more than 10,000 apple, cherry, peach, pear, plum, and quince trees, losing nearly all of them repeatedly to hard winters, blight, and grasshopper plagues, starting over nearly every year. By 1861 he was down to his family's last eight dollars and a single surviving tree, a Siberian crab apple. He sent that remaining money to a seed grower in Bangor, Maine, and received a bushel of apple seeds in return. From that seed, grafted onto his surviving crab tree, grew the tree that finally, in 1868, produced apples that survived a Minnesota winter — the variety Gideon named Wealthy, after his wife. He shared seedlings freely with anyone who asked and never sought to profit from the discovery, but Wealthy went on to become one of the top apple varieties grown nationally by the early 20th century and effectively launched Minnesota's fruit-growing industry. For decades it was assumed the Siberian crab was a genetic parent, but modern DNA testing has since revealed Wealthy is actually a cross of Duchess of Oldenburg and Jonathan. The fruit has crisp, juicy flesh with a mild, tangy-sweet flavor, best eaten fresh, though also used for cider.